Understand
by Krahae
Summary: Drabble, one shot. Magic made Harry what everyone expected him to be. Be careful what you wish for.


A/N: I have no idea what this is. Drabble, one shot, idle musing... I was having a bad day, and had a moment of realizing that I despise the (superpoweredhero) ideal. How many times do we see the damage such things cause? How often does power that immense come with the ability to remain human after? Given the power to shape worlds or destroy them with a thought, could you not? Would you know how to resist?

-

**Understand**

"Harry! Where have you been?" A brown-haired ball of repressed emotion speeds toward me and bounces off a layer of condensed air. She lands with a muffled 'oof' and blinks in confusion.

Dumbledore blinks up at me from his seat, arm a ruin still. There's a part of me that wants nothing more than to hug each and every one of these people, for their caring. Misguided, perhaps but they did. They are _why_ I am what I am.

What I am.

Questions fly, but I don't raise my eyes. The noise... "Where have I been?" I ask them back, mimicking the sound.

_They won't understand._

There's a moment of confusion, but I think they at least understand my words. I don't really have an answer though, how could I really? Is there a name for [dispersed into the concept of magic itself until I realize my concept of self is intact]? The tragedy of this all is that the answer they seek, isn't the question I'm the answer to.

The Order is a mess. I don't know how long I've been... [there] but it's been hard on them. Moody... he must see it. See something of it. See me for what I am, by instinct or maybe he's just that much of an idea made into pure form as well. He's gesturing around and trying to get people to take cover and seeing that as pointless, aims and starts firing spells.

_They won't understand._

I open my palm, gesturing toward his unsteady from that stands nearby, wand raised and ready. There is no spell. No words. No light.

The ground faults, cracks and blasts away from the point of a wave that spears forward, a wake of stone and rending wood, the air compressed into a white bowshock until it meets-

"Mad Eye" Moody ceases to be in a particulate haze of red and mist. The wall behind him, and likely a few blocks beyond that follow him into the "Next Great Adventure". If that means a stain on Molly's apron, then it should be an adventure in better use of detergents.

I'm not satisfied, of course. I am not affected. Death. There isn't reason for it, against it. This means nothing. It's _pointless_ till they understand.

People are standing around in shock. I... distantly I can understand it. They wanted this ideal, this legend to come and save them, rather than having to save themselves. What I was supposed to be. I was to be bearer of some power, a key to a lock that no one could identify. Stronger than the strongest.

_Careful what you wish for._

Dumbledore is screaming something. I can't hear him. There's this insistent rush of noise in my head. In my ears. _They_ call out to me – not the people, or their thought... their magic. The magic in them is so loud. Some aren't so. It doesn't matter really. Small, dim stars next to my cataclysm.

There's nothing to satisfy me here. Not till they shed these ideas. Maybe in time.

I hook a finger into the air and tear, the blackness awake and blinking back out of the gap as I step through. I leave the Order and my name behind. They'll follow soon. A slight curve turns my lips, and I wonder if they'll start to understand what it is I've become.

_Monster_.

Voldemort tried. He really did, thinking there was some trick to being immortal that would make him more and less than he was. Partially right. He let those things he was limit him. Let his humanity hold him back. Unbelievable really. He was too _human_. Too bound up in human ideals. Subjugation. Power over men, when he already had power of himself. Turning eyes outward is weakness.

Laws. Boundaries. Belief. Everything they've been taught is another noose, another leash. Swish and flick. Focus and determination. Proper pronunciation. Unforgivables. How much rot can they contain till the thing they've become collapses under the weight of decay? Magic _is_, it's not a structure, or a tool. It's a living, breathing force, and it's time they stopped fucking around and started respecting it. They don't understand. Don't respect that which they are. Crawling on the ground rather than rising up in to the dark eternal skies. It is sin.

I'll kill them till they understand.

If I run out of people to kill, if I'm the last one, then my job is complete. Understanding will have returned to the magical world.

The rip drops me a few thousand feet above Little Hangleton. It's an amazing view... free falling, the curve of the world a blue sweep all around me. Terminal velocity into perfection... It would be foolish to let such things distract me. There are things to do, after all. There was a prophecy to fulfill. May as well get it out of the way so I can stop being hyphenated. I can feel Tom Riddle below me. Can feel him squirming, that itch he'd forgotten how to understand nagging at him. Fear. Magic, his, tied to [all there is] loyally trying to warn him. Ragged nails scraping along the inner wall of his skull. I'm still a mile up, but it's close enough. Antares would be close enough.

Magic is everywhere. It's like living in a swimming pool and being taught that there is no water. Oh, but if you take a water gun, and work it just right, you can maybe make your friends feel the stream. The Dursleys never took me swimming. Gillyweed and Tri-Wizard – I'll _break _them, unmake this colossal foolishness and then they'll see.

_I am, what they could be._

I gather the stuff of the world up, raw potential and power and shove, pressing down.

The town of Little Hangleton drops twenty feet below the bedrock, flattened utterly, the shockwave of air and debris splashing out at the speed of sound. I remember seeing something like this when I was young, and the memory makes me laugh, still falling. I remember seeing Dudley eating an ice cream sandwich, and I'd said something to annoy him. He squeezed the thing till ice cream oozed and fell out the sides.

I just made a city into an ice cream sandwich. The idea had me laughing all the way till impact, the second hammer of force my body had become throwing debris and a smaller blast out a dozen feet. I let the idea of me melt into the ground, slip outside of the destruction and gather itself out of the sparkling weave that is magic. Poor Tom. So caught up in his world of words and rituals, so blind to what he was breathing, eating, shitting day to day.

If only he understood. I could be less bored.

I feel the fabric the world is printed on shudder around me, spitting out little wizards and witches all over. Aurors. Some Ministry Irregulars, obviously Fudge's men, drafted into service to stop the next Dark Lord: Harry Potter. Such a joke, really.

Why would I care about lording over ants? There is no sublime joy to being the only man in a world of insects. Not that I thought less of them. My Metamorphosis: Insect into Man. It's not so hard, really it isn't. Why can't they see? No satisfaction in squeezing the life out of a sleeping enemy. Where was the effort? The test and blood and work and satisfaction? _Stunners_... they're firing _stunners_ at me. I turn and hiss at some fool in Auror red and his flesh blasts free of his bones, leaving them wet and yellow and pink and glistening, as the remnants of his time in the mortal coil splatters on his fellows.

I dare you to surpass yourselves.

Become your own Chosen One.

Take up the mantle of heroes.

I will give you a false god to throw down, till like heroes you become more than you are, and strike me from the skies.

The spells become deadly, but I ignore them. What use is a pain curse when the idea they have of pain is so fleeting? What about _my_ pain? Living proof that the world around me is utterly ignorant. Unworthy of their gifts. Unappreciating of their potential? Pain... What about this constant-

You can't see this. Your world is so empty, and barren because of your narrow minds-

Foolish, ignorant, blind-

Refuse to see-

Blind, deaf, dumb to the amazing-

The noise breaks me, and I scream, the ripple throwing wizards around like confetti, their bodies twisting and pulled by forces they can't comprehend.

What will it take to open the world's eye? Should I rip the lids away, make them unable to blink? Yes. That's it. They've closed their minds for so long, it would only benefit everyone to have them opened again.

I'm dropping myself into the weave as they continue to fire, those still breathing and alive. Killing curses now. Death for death, life for life... they don't understand. This half life they've lived is no more than waking death. No more than an illusion, a corpse-flesh shroud pulled over bleeding eyes to hide a world made of rot and decay.

_I will make them see. _

**Every. **

**Mind.**

**Will.**

**Open.**

Around the world, they feel me. Feel suddenly the scalding power surrounding them, that magic is. Children too young to understand burst into flame or lose themselves, becoming brief and brilliant suns in a the vacuum of being. Older ones gibber and flail at the power around them, becoming the centers of personal Armageddons. A doll maker is crucified by his creations. A keeper of beasts raped and then eaten by animals he'd loved for ages, as they carry little pieces of their own god with them now. Honoring him.

The gurus and yogi's understand it best, but feel it something else, and simply fade back into the weave where I'm playing mad spider to the fate's tapestry.

A man in America understands that a simple cutting spell, made precise by exhaustive calculations could split atoms like muggle madmen have done, and in so understanding, does so. New York winks back at the sun briefly in his glory.

I strip them of law. Strip them of limits, of the boundaries of what they were. Lay them out naked and mewling like newborns to the glory and power that they've lived years sipping from a cup that never empties. "I am satisfied," they would scream back, as the cup becomes an ocean suddenly, and they little more than flotsam on it. Eyes wide open.

Mainland Europe is molten with magic being unleashed in great gouts. Wizards imploding on themselves out of brief comprehension. Oh, being a god is hard. So many just don't have the power of self to hold on to an idea so tightly it transcends physical bounds, and so they flare, bright and unbelievably beautiful as all their potential empties in an instant out into the world. In death, they finally understand though.

_This is what you have denied._

Surprise is the closest thing I can name as someone rips me back out of the fabric of the world and down onto the ground. Oh, I'm all a-quiver. My blood pumps, my heart races, my eyes shine with joy and there's a hum in the air like a hundred thousand thousand saw blades singing hymns.

Hermione is there, hair crackling with electricity and eyes empty and brilliant-

_She understands. _

Oh gods I want her so much right now.

She repeats what she's seen, and it's a dance now. The air itself becomes edged, the very particles in it trying to cut at me, unmake me. I let the vapor exsanguinate me, then lunge through that pool, a thing of shape and blood and great gaping smiling maw and dead white eyes that have seen eternity.

Shock paints across her face as I tear it off and frown. This... this isn't what-

Everything goes bright and backwards as I'm suddenly torn into a thousand pieces. It's difficult to think with the self stretched so far and in so many places, but I do so. I am legion. I _am_. Each fragment become me, complete and whole and all driven to unmake. This world has become rotten. I am the ruin of this ruin. Each me grins manically, and they all rip at the fabric upon which things are, and the universe groans in pain.

Hermione is not far behind, simply disbelieving each one of those echoes from existence. Each time she does it forces her to focus in too many places, and unwittingly she's becoming frayed, splintering, unraveling. Soon there's two of her. Then in moments two thousand.

I smile.

Then I show her myself.

Her mind was already opened. Likely she was putting the pieces together when I reduced Moody to constituent particles. Still, there was much more than some faulty ideal of being a god, which I'm not. No, what I show her is infinitely worse. I show her my hope.

There cannot be gods in this place I've seen. There is no salvation. No order. No scheme to the world an all it's infinitesimal motes. She begins to understand what unmade Harry Potter then. Hermione Granger shivers as her mind slips backwards, forgetting that concept of 'witch' and 'person' and instead assumes 'now' in all it's unholy glory.

Together in such a way that defies an idea of two beings, we begin. The dance is slow, but it need not be rushed, this dance which unmakes and rebirths the world.

Hermione had to be it, from the beginning. No one else would do. She needs order, and logic and the ideal of things bound and proper and neatly categorized in such a way that they are, and can be nothing else than what they are. In her need for those boundaries, laws, and lines, she understood. It takes being outside of them, to make them. You cannot create from within creation. She sees her laws failing, faltering at my hands.

And I've been unmaking them all night. She had to break the ideal to stop me, and in so doing put herself outside it. Like me.

I smile, and it's the rift into chaos itself.

_She understands_.

I look forward to vast eternities struggling with her. Ending this universe in our dance.

_They should have been more careful what they wished for._


End file.
